In the Quiet After Slaughter

excerpt

Momacted up in public she crossed one of these invisible demarcations.
We’d find her suicide notes magnetized to the fridge door
like shopping lists. Rough drafts, she called them. At the end of one
such letter, as though the deed had been accomplished, shewrote, I
was bored.
Asked what was stopping her from carrying out the threat, she
replied, Have you seen the price of natural gas lately?
The procedure was always the same: as soon as she began behaving
strangely, the cops were notified; an ambulance followed. A caring
social worker wrote a lengthy report.
We knew when it was time. Mom hid behind the curtains and
spied on passersby. School kids jeered. Eventually she would do
something deemed a danger to herself or others — the line. Cops
were alerted; an ambulance followed. A caring social worker wrote
a lengthy report.
Doctors began with pills. None worked. Electric shock therapy—
Edison medicine — did. A psychiatrist at the bughouse called us in
for a chat after the first session. He directed us to the patients’
lounge. We found Mom playing Scrabble.
– I haven’t felt this good in years! she beamed. She was unrecognizably
radiant. We gathered her things.
My father wanted to believe his wife had been cured; we all did.
The doctor did nothing to dissuade us. But the electrical charge had
the lasting power of a flashlight battery. My mother’s sanity waned
like the trailing notes of an orchestra. Follow-up drugs gave her the
shakes. She soon stopped taking them.
– I’m fine now, she declared. A-okay.
But she wasn’t A-okay. There was a look . . . that look. She slipped
away from us incrementally. In time, she was gone for good.
Exhausted from their shopping spree, Mr. and Mrs. Cameron turn in
early. Lenore stays up with us, bravely trading a tent shaking with
snores for the certain terror of being left alone with her brother.
Larry pelts his sister with marshmallows.
– Stop it! she cries.
– Make me, he challenges.
– I’m telling!
– You’ll die.

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In the Quiet After Slaughter

excerpt

– Gringos are sometimes kidnapped for sport, warned a Brit. With
that hair, you’d be hard not to notice.
The Canadian scoffed at the notion of danger— secretly yearned,
in fact, for adventure — and had only decided against thumbing to
the coast after witnessing an incident near the zocolo. Men identifying
themselves as police had beaten one of the Australians he’d been
drinking with, a rugby player built like a bulldozer.
Witherspoon woke late the following morning, his brain cells
jumbled by too much mescal. From the hotel balcony he’d watched
as the Cessna he was booked to be aboard struggled to clear the treetops.
The desk clerk who’d promised to rouse him early — who’d
accepted a gratuity to do so — feigned amnesia. The proprietor of
the airline refused him a refund.
– The next flight leaves in one week, señor. he said. Would you
like to purchase a ticket?
– I have a ticket!
– Correct, señor. But your ticket has today’s stamp.
Paco brakes hard, scattering a clutch of chickens. He rolls down the
window and calls to the hitchhiker.
– Dondeva?
With dictionaries open in their laps, they know just enough of the
other’s language to be understood. The Mexican says he’s a pharmaceutical
student soon to be wed. He’s heard of the Canadian on radio
broadcasts.
– You like to throw the beanball, no?
– I led the league.
Whenever a pretty girl is spotted, Paco toots his horn. She is
assigned a number from one to 10, which is then averaged out to much
laughter and swigs from a bottle the Mexican keeps under the seat.
Halfway to the coast, Paco stops for a siesta. Witherspoon opts for
a dip in the river running parallel to the road. Young housewives,
their laundry spread out to dry on its grassy banks, are intrigued by
the stranger’s tangerine hair and cornflake freckles. He strips and
dashes into the current. The giggling voyeurs float bars of soap
downstream inside empty juice cartons.
– Norteamericano, he hears them say. El hombre muy blanco.

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In the Quiet After Slaughter

excerpt

mulling over the specials at the supermarket, folks no longer said
they thought they saw the boy hopping a fence or skipping through
a yard. They began to say they saw Kimble. People who formerly
supported the manhunt, just like some of the characters on the TV
program, were now actively assisting his escape.
The Widow Nighs, for example, an enthusiastic follower of the
drama, left cakes and soft drinks under a cardboard box on her
patio. And the Bartons, it was later learned, left their garage
unlocked at night. They added a cot and sleeping bag, a stack of
comics, grilled-cheese sandwiches. Mr. Barton hooked up an electric
heater on evenings the temperature dipped.
The manner in which our neighbours referred to the police also
changed. Of course, most appreciated the presence of Sgt. McManus.
His baton disciplined the delinquents in ways no parent could. But
while these strange doings were unfolding, all cops— not just the sergeant—
became the feared Lt. Gerard. Even the TV character thought
to be the killer of the doctor’s wife, the one-armedman, landed a role in
ourmystery. Teens took to walking around with an arm tucked inside
a shirt. I did it. So did my pals. It was cool.
My brother Burt and his thugs roamed the streets most nights
picking fights and boosting anything not chained down. Had they
come across Fender in the early days of the search they would have
pummelled him ferociously. But because they hated the thought of
being allied with Gerard, Burt and his pals began doing whatever
they could to atone for their misplaced allegiance.
If Fender was reported hiding out in, say, an empty lot, an anonymous
caller would inform the police he’d been spotted elsewhere.
We all began wearing red baseball caps identical to Fender’s. It was
a craze, like the Hula Hoop—our way of expressing solidarity with
the fugitive’s tenacity.
Late one night, when it looked as though the cops had Fender
boxed in, Burt’s pals started darting between the houses, yelling,
He’s over here! After him! The cops couldn’t distinguish one red cap
from another and returned, flummoxed, to the command centre.
But just as school was about to resume, the dew thick in the high
grass, the police trapped Fender in the glow of a moonbeam. He
was attempting to cross the school grounds accompanied by a family
of raccoons.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00731WSPE

In the Quiet After Slaughter

excerpt

Dessert devoured, the dishes stacked in the sink, my mother ignited
a DuMaurier, leaned back in her chair and exhaled.
– You’ll never believe, she said, what happened next . . .
The social worker Lois Daniels went to the front door and gestured
to a man behind the wheel of a car. He took up a position on
the boulevard.
– He looked like a secret service agent or something, my mother
editorialized. Sunglasses and everything.
– It takes one to know one, Dad snorted.
Mrs. Rhodes knocked on Fender’s bedroom door.
– They’re here, sweetness.
The boy could be heard shuffling around inside.
– The place has a billiards table, Fender, Mom said. You can play
all day.
They took turns listening at the door. Mrs. Rhodes, Lois Daniels,
then Mom. The radio was playing a Beatles tune; the boy hummed
along.
She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh . . .
They went outside to talk over their next move. Lois Daniels consulted
with the spook, who retrieved a ladder from the side of the
house. He climbed to Fender’s second-floor window and peered
inside.
– Well? Lois Daniels asked.
Mom interrupted the narrative to fire a volley of smoke rings
across the kitchen. Through the haze I could see the despair set like
floor tiles in Mrs. Rhodes’ troubled face.
– The kid’s gone, the spook said. Door’s open.
The four of them raced to the rear of the house. They looked under
the porch and searched the shed. Lois Daniels poked the long grass
pushing up through the fence, a border guard sniffing out illegals.
The spook shook the apple tree.
–He seemed disappointed,Momsaid. Like he expected Fender to
fall to the ground like a piece of fruit.
Mrs. Rhodes climbed the back stairs and beckoned her son home.
To those who lived nearby her cry had become as familiar a sound as
the passing of the afternoon freight train.
– Fen-der! Fen-der!
They heard the moan of a distempered canine, the howl of a hungry…

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