Rage

“What are the first three words in the Bible?”

Pause. “In the beginning.”

“First line of the Twenty-third Psalm?”

“The… um… The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

“And you first ate your wife in 1956?”

“Yes-no… Charlie, let me alone…”

“Basic training, what year?”

“Nineteen-fifty-six!”

“You said fifty-seven before!” I screamed. “Here it goes! I’m going to blow someone’s head off right now!”

“I said fifty-six, you bastard!” Screaming, out of breath, hysterical.

“What happened to Jonah, Don?”

“He was swallowed by a whale.”

“The Bible says big fish, Don. Is that what you meant?”

“Yeah. Big fish. ’course it was.” Pitifully eager.

“Who built the ark?”

“Noah.”

“Where did you do your basic?”

“Fort Benning.”

More confident; familiar ground. He was letting himself be lulled. “Ever eaten your wife?”

“No.”

“What?”

“No!”

“What’s the last book in the Bible, Don?”

“Revelations.”

“Actually it’s just Revelation. No s. Right?”

“Right, sure, right.”

“Who wrote it?”

“John.”

“What was your father’s middle name?”

“John.”

“Ever get a revelation from your father, Don?”

A strange, high, cackling laugh from Don Grace. Some of the kids blinked uneasily at the sound of that laugh. “Uh… no… Charlie… I can’t say that I ever did.”

“What was your mother’s maiden name?”

“Gavin.”

“Is Christ numbered among the martyrs?”

“Ye-ess…” He was too Methodist to really be sure.

“How was he martyred?”

“By the cross. Crucified.”

“What did Christ ask God on the cross?”

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

“Don?”

“Yes, Charlie.”

“What did you just say?”

“I said ’my God, my God, why…'” Pause. “Oh, no, Charlie. That’s not fair!”

“You asked a question.”

“You tricked me!”

“You just killed someone, Don. Sorry.”

“No!”

I fired the pistol into the floor. The whole class, which had been listening with taut, hypnotic attention, flinched. Several people screamed. Pig Pen fainted again, and he struck the floor with a satisfying meat thump. I don’t know if the intercom picked it up, but it really didn’t matter.

Mr. Grace was crying. Sobbing like a baby.

“Satisfactory,” I said to no one in particular. “Very satisfactory.”

Things seemed to be progressing nicely.

I let him sob for the best part of a minute; the cops had started toward the school at the sound of the shot, but Tom Denver, still betting on his shrink, held them back, and so that was all right. Mr. Grace sounded like a very small child, helpless, hopeless. I had made him fuck himself with his own big tool, like one of those weird experiences you read about in the Penthouse Forum. I had taken off his witch doctor’s mask and made him human. But I didn’t hold it against him. To err is only human, but it’s divine to forgive. I believe that sincerely.

“Mr. Grace?” I said finally.

“I’m going outside now,” he said. And then, with tearful rebelliousness: “And you can’t stop me!”

“That’s all right,” I said tenderly. “The game’s over, Mr. Grace. We weren’t playing for keepsies this time. No one is dead down here. I shot into the floor.”

Breathing silence. Then, tiredly: “How can I believe you, Charlie?”

Because there would have been a stampede.

Instead of saying that, I pointed. “Ted?”

“This is Ted Jones, Mr. Grace,” Ted said mechanically.

“Y-Yes, Ted.”

“He shot into the floor,” Ted said in a robot voice. “Everyone is all right.” Then he grinned and began to speak again. I pointed the pistol at him, and he shut his mouth with a snap.

“Thank you, Ted. Thank you, my boy.” Mr. Grace began to sob again. After what seemed like a long, long time, he shut the intercom off. A long time after that, he came into view on the lawn again, walking toward the enclave of cops on the lawn, walking in his tweed coat with the suede elbow patches, bald head gleaming, cheeks gleaming. He was walking slowly, like an old man. It was amazing how much I liked seeing him walk like that.

CHAPTER 20

“Oh, man,” Richard Keene said from the back of the room, and his voice sounded tired and sighing, almost exhausted.

That was when a small, savagely happy voice broke in: “I thought it was great!” I craned my neck around. It was a tiny Dutch doll of a girl named Grace Stanner. She was pretty in a way that attracted the shop-course boys, who still slicked their hair back and wore white socks. They hung around her in the hall like droning bees. She wore tight sweaters and short skirts. When she walked, everything jiggled-as Chuck Berry has said in his wisdom, it’s such a sight to see somebody steal the show. Her mom was no prize, from what I understood. She was sort of a pro-am barfly and spent most of her time hanging around at Denny’s on South Main, about a half-mile up from what they call the corner here in Placerville. Denny’s will never be mistaken for Caesar’s Palace. And there are always a lot of small minds in small towns, eager to think like mother, like daughter. Now she was wearing a pink cardigan sweater and a dark green skirt, thigh-high. Her face was alight, elvish. She had raised one clenched fist unconsciously shoulder-high. And there was something crystal and poignant about the moment. I actually felt my throat tighten.

“Go, Charlie! Fuck ’em all!”

A lot of heads snapped around and a lot of mouths dropped open, but I wasn’t too surprised. I told you about the roulette ball, didn’t I? Sure I did. In some ways-in a lot of ways-it was still in spin. Craziness is only a matter of degree, and there are lots of people besides me who have the urge to roll heads. They go to the stockcar races and the horror movies and the wrestling matches they have in the Portland Expo. Maybe what she said smacked of all those things, but I admired her for saying it out loud, all the same-the price of honesty is always high. She had an admirable grasp of the fundamentals. Besides, she was tiny and pretty.

Irma Bates wheeled on her, face stretched with outrage. It suddenly struck me that what was happening to Irma must be nearly cataclysmic. “Dirty-mouth!”

“Fuck you, too!” Grace shot back at her, smiling. Then, as an afterthought: “Bag!”

Irma’s mouth dropped open. She struggled for words; I could see her throat working as she tried them, rejected them, tried more, looking for the words of power that would line Grace’s face, drop her breasts four inches toward her belly, pop up varicose veins on those smooth thighs, and turn her hair gray. Surely those words were there someplace, and it was only a matter of finding them. So she struggled, and with her low-slung chin and bulging forehead (both generously sprinkled with blackheads), she looked like a frog.

She finally sprayed out: “They ought to shoot you, just like they’ll shoot him, you slut!” She worked for more; it wasn’t enough. It couldn’t yet express all the horror and outrage she felt for this violent rip in the seam of her universe. “Kill all sluts. Sluts and sluts’ daughters!”

The room had been quiet, but now it became absolutely silent. A pool of silence. A mental spotlight had been switched on Irma and Grace. They might have been alone in a pool of light on a huge stage. Up to this last, Grace had been smiling slightly. Now the smile was wiped off.

“What?” Grace asked slowly. “What? What?”

“Baggage! Tramp!”

Grace stood up, as if about to recite poetry. “My mother-works-in-a-laundry-you-fat-bitch-and-you-better-take-back-what-you-just-said!”

Irma’s eyes rolled in caged and desperate triumph. Her neck was slick and shiny with sweat: the anxious sweat of the adolescent damned, the ones who sit home Friday nights and watch old