When King Henry II of England did penance for the murder of Thomas à Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, he walked barefoot to Becket’s tomb in sackcloth and crown, where he knelt as eighty monks whipped his naked back. But was he sorry that Becket had become a martyr, or that he was responsible for the death of an enemy who had once been a friend?
Outside the icy grass is a blank green, wet in spots. Her boots lie collapsed over one another on the back porch. She traces the yard with her bare feet.
Her uncle is on the front porch when she walks back with her muddy feet stuffed into her boots. “We don’t want to be late for dinner at your auntie’s. You know how she is,” he says as he comes down the steps.
“It’s too early to eat.” She unlocks the car.
“Girl, that’s what you do on Thanksgiving. C’mon, or all the dark meat will be gone.”
She doesn’t get in, looking at him across the roof of the car. “Did you hear from the prosecutor?”
“Yeah, I spoke to him. He don’t sound in a hurry to do nothing.” He laughs then meets her eyes. “You sorry you didn’t do it?”
A flock of birds rustle from the grass and into the air. “I did what my daddy wanted,” she says.
“Amen to that.” They climb in and shut the doors.
She stretches her hands on the steering wheel, listening to the wind shake the trees. “I want people to look at Curtis on the street and know what he did. And I want it to be the first thing they remember even after he’s dead.”
Henry II didn’t really want him killed. He’d only ranted about Becket to his knights who went to the cathedral and bludgeoned him to death. But words have blood in them; they can make fate take shape when they pass from a mouth into a heart.
Acknowledgments
THANK YOU: DENISE SHANNON, FOR YOUR UNSTINTING BRILLIANCE, faith in this book, and generous guidance; Megan Lynch, for seeing what was there before it (fully) was; the Ecco family, whose hard work and amazing support have transformed this story into a tangible thing; Arthur Flowers, for being a force of nature; Danna Anderson, for being you; Christine LeVeaux-Haley, for being a big sister when I had none; Rachel Abelson, Martin De Leon, Andrew Malan Milward, and Steve Barthleme, for being (painfully) early readers; Rhodes College; the University of Houston Honors College; and Sylvester Hoover at the Back in the Day Museum and Johnny B. Thomas at the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center, for telling the stories that need to be told and told.
Thank you to Chris and Jules, my ride and dies, my joy.
I am, and continue to be, especially grateful for the tremendous work of David Ridgen and Thomas Moore, Ben Greenberg, Jerry Mitchell, and Stanley Nelson.
About the Author
CHANELLE BENZ has published short stories in Guernica, Granta.com, Electric Literature, The American Reader, Fence, and The Cupboard, and she is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize. Her story collection, The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, was published in 2017 by Ecco. It was named a Best Book of 2017 by the San Francisco Chronicle and one of Electric Literature’s 15 Best Short Story Collections of 2017. It was also long-listed for the 2018 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Benz currently lives in Memphis, where she teaches at Rhodes College.
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The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE GONE DEAD. Copyright © 2019 by Chanelle Benz. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
COVER DESIGN BY SARA WOOD
COVER ARTWORK © KOMKRIT PREECHACHANWATE/SHUTTERSTOCK; © DINARA MAY/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Benz, Chanelle, author.
Title: The gone dead : a novel / Chanelle Benz.
Description: New York : Ecco, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018036322 | ISBN 9780062490698
Classification: LCC PS3602.E7248 G66 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018036322
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Digital Edition JUNE 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-249071-1
Version 05162019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-249069-8
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