Killing Everybody

by Mark Harris

  Junie’s room contained a bed, two chairs, and a boy’s roll-top desk. The desk had once been decorated with stickers expressing slogans, mottoes, and convictions, but these had been scraped away. The walls were punctured with hollow nail-holes, where photographs once had hung. The room was airless — both windows tight shut. Lala opened the closet door, thinking she might see evidence within, but the closet was empty except for coathooks and clothespoles at two levels, as if the closet had been shared by two people: in fact, however, Junie had shared the closet only with himself. He had outgrown the lower level, and risen to the upper.

  On the wooden slats of the roll-top desk many Match-box vehicles were lined in colorful rows — trucks, trailers, bulldozers, fire engines, racing cars, campers, tractors, motorcars, Cadillac ambulance, police cars, Greyhound buses, doubledecker London buses, and other vehicles of various descriptions, sometimes with wheels missing, all worn smooth from Junie’s touch, all purchased by the boy, sometimes in the company of his “father,” Brown, sometimes in the company of both Brown and Luella, always at Mordecai’s Toys at Larkin & McAllister, combines, tractors, kennel trucks, dumper trucks, tipper trucks, container trucks, girder trucks, pipe-carrying trucks, crane trucks, street-cleaning equipment, jeeps, pony trailers, hay trailers, refrigerator trucks, cattle trucks, and others. “Shall we open the desk?” Lala asked.

  They removed the Match-box vehicles from the roll-top desk, and rolled it open. Lala expected to see a typewriter. Instead, she saw several drafts of letters in progress or abandoned, some handwritten, some typewritten, saluting various persons by name or by title or by occupation, as for example, “My Very Dear Reverend.” Here lay also several old Chronicle clippings. One was this:

  Police were hunting Tuesday for a killer who has hanged two dogs from trees in the quiet Forest Hills residential neighborhood.

  Officers said the first dog, a 3-month-old German shepherd belonging to a college student, was found strung over a tree branch last Friday by two policemen.

  A teen-ager discovered a spaniel strung in a tree Monday about a block away. Its owner was not located.

  Another was this:

  A Santa Monica Superior Court jury Tuesday awarded $125,000 damages to Eugene K. Friedman 44, for the traffic death of his 10-year old son.

  On April 13, after conducting his own investigation of the accident, Friedman shot and killed Lou T. Watts, 31, driver of the van which struck and killed the boy, Ethan.

  Friedman was convicted of voluntary manslaughter by a Superior Court jury Aug. 22 for the slaying of Watts. The prosecution had demanded the death penalty. Judge Adolph Alexander placed Friedman on three years’ probation Friedman acted as his own attorney at the proceedings.

  Friedman shot Watts in a parking lot across the street from the Beverly Hills City Hall after both had attended a hearing on the revocation of Watts’ driver’s license. A policeman was wounded. Friedman said he had the delusion that his dead son was standing beside him and needed protection.

  These letters and newspaper clippings were safely concealed from Luella, who seldom entered Junie’s room, or who, when she did never touched the Match-box vehicles on the roll-top desk, the very sight of which depressed her unspeakably. Among the letters one attracted Lala especially.

  My Very Dear Mr. Stanley Krannick:

  We have been receiving reports from many sources concerning your alleged mistreatment of your infant child, “Junie.” . . .

  So it began, this letter to the father of Junie, true husband to Luella composed by Brown upon stolen stationery, above the signature of one nonexistent McCracken Black. Upon a separate page accompanying the letter its author had practiced writing the signature, and upon yet another page Lala read a second copy of the letter — apparently the draft from which the final version was copied.

  Supervisor who? What Federation? What Saturday? Junie who? Ah yes, the Child Welfare Federation. But Junie was dead, or in Asia, or both. Then perhaps this letter had been written some time ago. At any rate, thought Lala, Brown was definitely her man. The author of “My Very Dear Mr. Stanley Krannick” was undeniably also the author of “My Very Dear German Shepherd Dog Owner,” and the author of numerous other works besides, no doubt, such as “My Very Dear . . .” whatever his name was, the smelly fellow from Classified. “This is perfect,” she said.

  “Let’s see,” said Christopher.

  “No,” she said, “let’s put the cars back on the desk where we found them. We mustn’t be snooping around.”

  “Are you taking that letter with you?” he asked.

  “I’m borrowing it,” Lala replied.

  “Without permission?” Christopher asked.

  “I’ll ask his permission when I see him,” she said. “I know you won’t mention it to him in the meantime.”

  “Not if I can sleep at your house,” said Christopher.

  She’d send Christopher’s parents this little letter. She’d slightly revise it, bring it up-to-date. No, not send, she’d carry it, deliver it herself, drop it into their very mailbox. My Very Dear Parents of Christopher, she thought, writing forward in her mind, although these reports are scattered and incomplete it seems certain that your child has been running the streets in the wind minus all supervision. Our representative case worker will visit you if we can ever find you home. What are you doing that’s so urgent that you even abandon your child to do it? You are manufacturing bombs, we hear, at the Welton plant, you’re bombing the children of Asia — you who neglect your own child. But was that the business of the Federation? She supposed that the letter as she had cast it lacked authenticity. She’d work at it. Would he never stop barking? She’d have sent an anonymous letter to those people across the street, no doubt about it, now that she had the hang of it. Mr. Brown had put a good idea into her head. But her letter would be much stronger than that meek little letter Mr. Brown sent her, you may be sure of that, saying Shut that goddam dog up or I’ll bomb your asses, you bitches and bastards. Now where had she heard those poetic phrases before? Oh yes, she’d said them herself. She was quoting herself. She was a famous author quoting herself on the telephone this morning to the poor defenseless girl at the Chronicle switchboard. “Yes,” she said to Christopher, “you may sleep at my house, but in the guest room, not in the girls’ room.”

  “That’s O.K.,” said Christopher.

  “It better be,” she said, leaving the Brown’s house. The wind, which was truly raw now, with venom to it, almost snatched the letter from her hand. And whom should she see coming in with the wind but James Berberick in his green BMW, bringing with him, of course, latest up-to-the-minute information concerning the classified advertisement Lala had placed in the Chronicle, seeking, as we know, recovery of her lost German Shepherd thoroughbred barking, biting dog, Paprika.

  “Hey, Lala,” he called, leaping athletically from his car, “I canceled the ad.”

  All the way out here to tell her that! The peak of altruism! The telephone wasn’t invented, was it? Have fun, she thought. Make it last. “You must be mad,” she said to James.

  “I truly believe I am,” he said. “For a minute I thought I had the wrong house. That’s not like me. I didn’t know you had a boy. I thought you only had girls.”

  “I was tidying up for a neighbor,” she said. “You met him — Mr. Brown.”

  “Where’s your mother? I meant to get her address,” James said, taking a pencil from his pocket. He asked, “Did I leave a pencil in your house this morning?”

  “Why are you here?” she asked. “You shouldn’t be here. Men are fantastic, they’re so persistent. Come in out of the wind.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I have a little time.”

  “Are you off work?” she asked. “Isn’t it early?”

  “I didn’t go back,” he said. “I took the afternoon off because I deserved it. I was consulting with somebody regarding a
possible business deal. Listen, something I need.”

  “Such as what?”

  “A good tire,” he said.

  “Are you coming in?” she asked.

  “I was hoping to,” he said. What did she mean by that? Coming! In! Was she aware of the provocative way she said things? Her voice on the telephone alone would sell a thousand massages a day. Of course, not all men responded in the same way to a voice; one man’s goose was another man’s sauce. Bitch, she had got him into all this, stroking her dog on the living-room floor, forcing him to go roaring off to Luella’s. Lately he had tried so hard to become free of Luella, but now he’d fallen back into her net forever. “What time does it get dark these nights?” he asked. But he did not wait for an answer. He said, “This noon when I came here I saw this lady walking a dog in a fur coat. I wonder who she was.”

  “I saw her too. I don’t know who,” she said. “Christopher, if you’ll run upstairs I’ll do your knee.”

  “What did he do to his knee? James asked.

  “He fell off his bike,” said Lala.

  “Boys will be boys,” James replied.

  “What kind of a dog did she have?” Lala inquired.

  “I don’t know dog types,” said James. “It was just some kind of a screechy little dog, nothing like yours. I canceled your ad, you know. I’ll tell you what I need, I need one tire. I thought I’d exchange a tire with you.”

  “Then what kind of a fur coat was she wearing?” Lala asked. “Sometimes I know a person by their coat.”

  “I don’t know coats, either,” he said.

  Just ladies, Lala thought. She was tempted to seize him by the nose. She’d do it, too, and let thing lead to thing, if only the girls weren’t on their way home, and if only she knew Harold’s plans; and if only she could remember this fellow’s name, too. Where were Harold’s bowling shoes? They’d been standing on the television. Then she’d thrown them into the front closet. Suppose she flung open the door of the front closet and Harold were hanging there dead, or all slumped over with an ice pick in his back. She flung open the closet door. There they were. She picked up the shoes, closed the closet door, and dropped the shoes at the base of the coatrack.

  “He’s a big fellow,” James Berberick observed.

  “I’m everybody’s prisoner,” she said. If Harold came home for his shoes and found her gone he’d be furious. And her mother would phone, too. Lala couldn’t move. In the early days, when her mother called, Lala enjoyed taking the call in bed with Harold, or best of all with Harold in her, and talking to her mother in that advantageous position — let her mother rave on and on telling Lala what a bad match she’d made with stupid Harold, and Harold all the time right in her there right snug. Nowadays it wasn’t that Iris didn’t call, it was only that Harold was never in her any more. He’d quit. Something had gone wrong, she didn’t know what — well, yes she did, she’d taken off eighty-five pounds, to Harold’s dismay, who loved women to be fat. “More bounce to the ounce,” said Harold.

  Lala’s encounter with Christopher over there in Mr. Brown’s house had oddly stimulated her. She’d seize this smelly Mr. Classified, she’d clamp him like a vise between her thighs, except it would never stop there, fun was fun but that was more than fun, it had implications, and the girls coming home and all, and possibly Harold for his bowling shoes. She had overheated herself, and she was sweating, unless it was he who was sweating: one of them was smelling bad, let’s put it that way. “Was her dog on a leash?” she asked. “I’ll ask Christopher if he knows who she was; he knows everything that goes on in the neighborhood. You wait here,” and she fled up the stairs, overtaking Christopher on the landing, steering him hastily before her into the children’s bathroom, and closing and locking the door behind them. “I’m exhausted,” she said. Her face alarmed the boy. “I’ve got to catch my breath,” she said.

  “I’ll go out and wait,” Christopher said, longing for the door.

  “Don’t be frightened,” she said.

  “I’m not frightened,” he said.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said.

  “I know it.”

  “My heart is beating very fast and I’m awfully confused,” she said.

  “My heart does that,” he said, “but I’m not confused.”

  “We should put something on your knee,” she said. “We should scrub it up first. When did you have a bath last?” She supposed she’d learn about boys in time. Christopher’s parents enraged her. She couldn’t wait to get to that letter. Every day she assumed some new aspect of Christopher’s care. Pretty soon she and Harold would be expected to start saving for Christopher’s college education. Can’t you just see Harold doing that, tightwad that he was? “One good thing about girls,” Harold said, “you don’t have to send them to college.” Some people abandoned their children until they were raised, and then reclaimed them. Lala’s rage grew. My Very Dear Neglectful Parents of Christopher, she wrote in her mind, if you don’t start paying some attention to your boy you’ll wake up some night soon . . . no, that wasn’t right. Good idea, wrong direction, and she felt again a large measure of gratitude to Mr. Brown for making this good idea available to her. All a person needed was a suggestion. It was a wonder she hadn’t thought it up herself, though she must have been on the verge of it, according to an article she recently read. “Just put your leg up here,” she said to Christopher.

  “It’ll sting,” he said.

  “That’s what makes it do the work,” said Lala. “Be brave. Think of the astronauts. Roll up your pants more so I can get at it.”

  “That’s as far as they go,” he said.

  “Then take them off,” she said.

  He was doubtful about that. He thought of his underpants, ripped to ribbons. Parts of him would stick out.

  “Don’t be shy,” said Lala, “I’m a mother, and mothers have seen everything. Wait a minute, I’ll go ask . . .” but she had forgotten James Berberick’s name. She unlocked the bathroom door and left, standing at the railing of the landing and calling down to — damn, she couldn’t just shout out “Hey you” in her own house. “I’m going to put Christopher in the tub,” she called.

  James was standing with his arms folded, at the window, observing his own car, and watchful, too, for the lady in fur walking her dog. He was singing in a low voice, “Once in a while, will you try to give one little thought to me,” which he had carried with him from Luella’s. He turned to Lala. “Sure,” he said, “fine, put the kid in two tubs for all I care.” Why was she telling him this? Luella never gave baths any more. Until recently she gave good baths, but now she kept linen in the tub. “Take a shower,” she’d say, but that wasn’t the point, as she well knew — the point wasn’t the bath but Luella’s giving it. She had her rules. He’d have very strict rules himself once he set up in business, no fooling around, no self-indulgence. A rich masseuse once told him, “Keep it legal, that’s the secret of profits,” and he said upward to Lala, “Listen, after I change that tire I want to talk over a business proposition with you.”

  “I want to ask your advice,” she replied. “This boy needs a bath.”

  “Give him a bath,” said James.

  “He’s thirteen years old,” Lala said.

  “It’s never too soon to begin,” said James.

  “I need your help,” she said.

  “I’ll help,” he eagerly said. He certainly would. He’d love to help a lady bathe a boy; he’d never quite done that before, though he’d bathed around in various combinations in various parlors of massage in various cities of the United States, and Saigon in Asia.

  “I just want advice,” she said. “Don’t come up. Oh my dumb husband, he’ll be back for his bowling shoes.”

  “What advice do you want?” James asked, restrained by her calling to his attention Harold’s bowling shoes. “This is how we’ll work when we
’re in business together,” he said. “We’ll give each other advice. We’ll consult, we’ll confer. You’ll ask me and I’ll ask you.”

  “I don’t know the state of mind of a boy thirteen,” she said. And this fellow, too, was a mystery. What in the world was he talking about — in business together, consulting, conferring? Talk about wild!

  “A boy thirteen is filthy-minded,” said James.

  “You’re not helping,” Lala said, and she turned away.

  James, too, turned, resuming his song and watching the voting go forward in Mr. Maxim’s garage. Suppose that lady came to vote without her dog or coat! Would he recognize her? How many times a day did a lady walk her dog? It depended on the lady and the dog. Dogs and children tied people up. That’s why he’d never marry, he believed, although this was tedious, too, and expensive as well, this chasing around, this struggling against the odds, hoping against hope that all factors came together — ladies at the ready, husbands at the office, children at their dreams, and he himself at the right place at the right time, and then of course it would be just his luck that having calculated all factors to perfection he’d be interrupted by this huge joker Harold sauntering home for his bowling shoes.

  He was dismayed to see how far down his tire really was. The slow leak had accelerated. Now here came two little chicks, one with a lunch-pail, turning up the walk, too, rejoicing at the sight of Paprika, recovered, running to the garden gate and kissing Paprika through the gate, and Paprika kissing them, too, in a love-fest of wet tongues; oh, for Christ’s sake, this was the rest of the brood, a thousand children live here, but at least the brood was girls by a margin of two to one, and that was something — little girls were certainly preferable to little boys. He often thought he’d capture several girls and start a farm, raise up prize girls, breed them, teach them the art of massage, raise more, breed more (to show his earnestness, he himself would sire the stock), and soon become the world’s primary masseuse-producing center; you’d go to Africa for your diamonds, China for your rice, France for your wine, Mexico for your jumping-beans, and James Berberick’s farm for your masseuses.