Blackburn

by Bradley Denton

  “So?”

  “Exactly my point,” the groom said. “Everybody screws around. It’s like eating or breathing. It doesn’t mean anything. Getting laid is just getting laid, and that doesn’t change because you have some piece of paper. It doesn’t mean you don’t love your wife. It’s not like you’re going to leave her or anything. Right?”

  “Guess not,” Blackburn said. He glanced at the stall. “But it does seem like you’re getting a head start.”

  The groom snickered. “Oh, yeah, well. That was Cindy. We went steady when I was fourteen, and we never did much back then, so we were sort of wondering how it would’ve been. You know. Last chance to find out. Doesn’t mean anything.”

  “If you say so.”

  The groom drained his pint and shoved the bottle into the wastecan. “The thing is, see, I told Eleanor I’d be faithful. And I will be, in the true sense of the word. I’ll take good care of her, and I’ll never hurt her. So I’m asking you not to tell her about this. It’d just upset her. It shouldn’t, but it would. That’s the way she is.”

  “She won’t hear it from me,” Blackburn said.

  The groom reached out and squeezed Blackburn’s shoulder. “Thanks, man,” he said. Then he opened the door and went out.

  Blackburn shut the door, then went into the stall and shut that door too. He wiped the toilet seat with a strip of tissue and sat down to think. The groom’s philosophy almost fit what had happened between him and Dolores, except the genders were reversed. Maybe that meant that men and women were, in fact, alike. Maybe the normal condition for both sexes was a constant desire to copulate with as many different partners as often as possible, which would mean that people like him and Eleanor were mutants. Maybe it was perverse to fixate on one person and to want that person to return the perversion. Maybe he had been unreasonable to expect Dolores to refrain from fucking hairy strangers in the middle of the day, and Eleanor was being unreasonable to expect Steve to refrain from fucking Cindy at their wedding reception.

  Maybe. He couldn’t decide. The issue was complex, and he had too little information. He needed additional input before he could make up his mind.

  He left the restroom and went to the end of the hall as “The Tennessee Waltz” began playing in the main room. He watched the bride and groom take their spotlight dance. The bride’s dress swirled, and the groom’s hair was mussed just enough to make him look charming. They gazed into each other’s eyes and grinned. As the song ended, they kissed, and their friends and relatives applauded.

  The next song was also a waltz, and other couples joined in the dancing. Blackburn entered the room and walked around the dancers to the cake table. He ate a third piece of cake while he watched the dancers turn and twirl. The frosting was already starting to get crusty, but Blackburn didn’t mind. He ate yet another piece after that, and drank two more cups of punch. By the time he finished, a dollar dance was in progress. For a dollar, anyone could dance with the bride. The collected money would go toward honeymoon expenses.

  Blackburn took his remaining cash from his pocket and counted it. Four dollars and sixty cents. Spending a dollar here would make reaching Kansas City a real stretch. On the other hand, he wanted to talk to the bride, and this was his best chance. He put three dollars and sixty cents back into his pocket and got into the dollar-dance line.

  The dollar dances were short, lasting a minute or less apiece, so Blackburn’s turn came soon. As he approached the bride, he knew that all eyes in the room were on him, and that most of their owners were wondering who the hell he was. As he took the bride’s warm hand in his, he saw the groom give him a nod. The groom had confidence in Blackburn’s discretion.

  “Hello, Eleanor,” Blackburn said. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Her face was frozen in a smile, but Blackburn could see that behind it, she was pretty. She was shorter than she had appeared from a distance, and small-boned. She seemed so light that Blackburn had the impression that a strong hug would crush her. Her dark-blond hair was permed into ringlets. Blackburn leaned in close to speak to her, and the ringlets brushed his cheek.

  “So now you’re Steve’s wife,” Blackburn said.

  She rolled her eyes. “It hardly seems real yet.”

  “Till death do you part,” he said. “I suppose you’ve thought a lot about that.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The till-death-do-you-part business.”

  “Well,” the bride said, “that’s what marriage is all about.”

  “I was married too,” Blackburn said. “But it didn’t last till death. Not hers or mine, anyway. She became involved with someone else. Of course, that sort of thing couldn’t happen to you and Steve.”

  The bride stiffened and looked away. Blackburn could see that she wanted him to leave now, but he couldn’t. Not yet.

  “It does happen, though,” he said. “Sometimes it’s the woman, sometimes the man. I guess they have their reasons.”

  The bride looked back at him. Her smile had vanished. “I can’t imagine what. There’s a Commandment against it.”

  “I know,” Blackburn said. “But what if something happens anyway? What if someone has a good, loving spouse, and he or she goes astray just the same?”

  The bride’s cheeks flushed. She was angry. Blackburn was ruining her dollar dance.

  “Then he or she should be shot,” she said. She pulled her hand from Blackburn’s. “Thank you for the dance.”

  Blackburn went outside and began to sweat again, so he rubbed his hands on his jeans to keep them dry. He went to the Valiant and took the Colt Python from under the front seat. The grip and trigger were hot. He returned to the building. It was too late to do anything for himself, but he could still do something for Eleanor.

  Once inside again, he took a breath of air-conditioned air and cocked the Python. Then he yelled “Steve!” loud enough to be heard over the music.

  Heads turned. People saw the pistol. There were shouts. Some of the men started toward him. The music stopped.

  The groom was standing on the far side of the room. It was a longer shot than Blackburn had ever tried. But the middle of the room had been emptied for the dollar dance, and the man dancing with the bride pushed her to the floor and lay down on top of her. The people near the groom moved away from him. Blackburn had a clear line of fire.

  He used a two-handed grip and aimed for the head, squeezing the trigger as the groom started to run. The groom dropped and screamed. The men heading for Blackburn stopped and turned to look. The groom lay on his back, doubled up, rocking. Blackburn sprinted across to him, jumping over the bride and her dollar-dance partner.

  The groom held his crotch with both hands. Blood was soaking his tuxedo pants.

  “Damn,” Blackburn said, and cocked the Python again.

  “Where’s my dick?” the groom asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Blackburn said. “Bad shot.” Then he fired into the groom’s right eye.

  He turned and saw that the exit was clogged with people squealing and squirming like baby pigs. Other people were standing and staring like concrete prairie dogs.

  “Welcome home,” Blackburn told himself.

  At that moment the burly man who had clapped Blackburn on the back charged toward him. Blackburn pointed the Python at him. “Stop,” he said, and the man stopped. “Lie down,” he said, and the man lay down. So did everyone else, except for a few who still struggled to get outside. Blackburn let them go.

  The bride crawled out from under her dance partner and stood. She looked at the groom, then ran at Blackburn. He lowered the gun and waited for her. When she reached him, she scratched his face. Then she hit him in the chest with her fists.

  “Why?” she asked. She asked it over and over again.

  Blackburn looked around until he saw the woman in the yellow dress. She was lying under the cake table. He went to her, and the bride came along, hitting him and asking her question.

  “Cindy,” B
lackburn said, nudging the woman under the table with his foot. “Come out and tell Eleanor why I shot Steve.”

  The woman didn’t move, so Blackburn cocked the Python. Then she came out and stood. The bride stopped hitting Blackburn and faced the woman.

  “Why?” the bride asked.

  The woman in the yellow dress began crying.

  Blackburn thought that was a copout, but he supposed that she would have to confess sooner or later. He left her there with the bride and headed for the door, which was clear now. Halfway there, a boy on the floor clutched his ankle and held up a cloth bag.

  “Is this what you want?” the boy asked.

  “No,” Blackburn said.

  “Is this what you want?” the boy asked again. He asked it three more times, so Blackburn took the bag to shut him up. The boy released his ankle, and Blackburn went outside.

  In the parking lot, a man behind a pickup truck took a shot at Blackburn with a rifle. The bullet went through the cloth bag and sprayed bits of masonry from the wall of the Lions Club building. Blackburn ran for the Valiant, firing two shots into the pickup truck.

  He threw the bag and the pistol into the Valiant, jumped in, and started the engine as the rifleman came out from behind the pickup. Blackburn grabbed the Python with his left hand and fired out the window. The rifleman ducked back behind the truck. Blackburn backed the Valiant from its parking space, put it in Drive, and stomped the accelerator. He saw the rifleman again in the rearview mirror, so he reached outside and fired the Python’s last shot backward. The recoil hurt his wrist, but the bullet shattered the pickup’s side window, and the rifleman dove behind another car.

  Blackburn sped north out of Goodland, away from I-70, watching for sheriff’s deputies and the Kansas Highway Patrol. He steered with his knees while he reloaded the Python. He was operating on an intense sugar buzz. He turned east when he reached U.S. Highway 36 and switched cars in the town of Atwood. It was only then that he looked into the cloth bag that the boy had given him.

  It contained the money from the dollar dance. Some of the men had paid tens and twenties to dance with the bride. There was even one fifty.

  Blackburn couldn’t go to Kansas City or anywhere else along I-70 for a while, so instead he headed into Nebraska via a tortuous route of county and country roads. As he drove, he considered finding out Eleanor’s last name so he could mail the money to her. After all, he wasn’t a thief. He did steal the occasional automobile, but that was a necessity. He hadn’t meant to steal from Eleanor. He had only meant to see her receive justice. He wouldn’t want her to think otherwise.

  After consideration, however, Blackburn decided to keep the money himself. Eleanor, he had realized, wouldn’t want it. There wasn’t going to be a honeymoon anyway.

  SIX

  BLACKBURN CHOOSES STERILITY

  On the day after he killed his eleventh man, Blackburn decided to have a vasectomy. That was because the Monday Kansas City Times reported that the victim had been a father of four. Blackburn didn’t enjoy reading it. He wished that he had stayed behind the grill instead of taking his morning break.

  It wasn’t that he regretted what he had done. Late Sunday, Number Eleven had run over a dog and had made a hash mark in the air with his finger, so Blackburn had driven after him and killed him at the next red light. It had been quick—one .357 bullet through the side window, and the light had changed. Blackburn had rolled up his own window and driven on. No one had seen. Kansas City was dead on Sunday nights.

  Number Eleven had deserved what he had gotten, but Blackburn thought it sad that the man had fathered four children who would now be warped by his cruelty in life and his ugly death. With that thought, Blackburn realized that he himself would not make an exemplary father and that he might die an ugly death of his own.

  After his experience with Dolores, he doubted that he would ever take another wife. But he had a sex drive as strong as that of any other twenty-four-year-old man, and women found his sandy hair and blue eyes attractive, so there would be girlfriends and one-nighters. He could not allow himself to impregnate them.

  Paying for the operation might be a problem. Upon arriving in Kansas City in September, he had spent most of his cash on documents identifying him as Arthur B. Cameron, and the rest on a scabrous 1970 Dart. He had then landed his job at Bucky’s Burgers, but in two months of work, he had saved only fifty dollars. He would have to find a clinic that performed cheap sterilizations.

  During his afternoon break, he went into Bucky’s office and looked through the Yellow Pages. He found what he needed under the heading of “Birth Control”:

  Responsible Reproduction of Kansas City

  *Pregnancy Testing*

  *Birth Control/Family Planning*

  *Abortion Counseling and Services*

  *Vasectomies*

  *Fees Scaled to Income*

  *Open Noon to 10:00 P.M. Weekdays*

  The ad was followed by a telephone number and a midtown address. Blackburn’s one-room basement apartment had no phone, and he didn’t want to call from Bucky’s, so he decided to visit Responsible Reproduction after work. He spent the rest of the afternoon in a state of anticipation, knowing that he was about to give a great gift to the world.

  * * *

  Stinking of deep-fryer grease, Blackburn pushed open a glass door embedded with wire mesh and found himself in a room illuminated by fluorescent tubes. Plastic chairs lined the walls. Most were occupied by women, a few of whom clutched the hands of nervous men. Three toddlers sat on the linoleum floor playing with G.I. Joe dolls. An odor of medicine mixed with Blackburn’s own smell.

  He approached a middle-aged woman who sat at a desk beside a doorway. A sign on the desk read ELLEN DUNCAN. “Ms. Duncan,” Blackburn said, “my name is Arthur Cameron. I want a vasectomy.”

  Ms. Duncan opened a drawer and brought out a pamphlet that she pushed across to him. It was entitled “Facts to Consider About Vasectomy (Male Sterilization).”

  Blackburn took the pamphlet and gave it a glance. “Thank you,” he said, “but I’ve considered the facts, and I’ve decided to have the operation. Could you tell me how much it will cost?”

  Ms. Duncan frowned. “Our urologists charge Responsible Reproduction a hundred and ninety-five dollars. The amount that we pass on to the patient varies according to what he can afford.” She paused. “Pardon me for asking, but have you discussed this with your spouse?”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Are you in a long-term relationship?”

  “No.”

  “Have you any children?”

  “No.” Blackburn wondered what these questions had to do with anything.

  “Mr. Cameron,” Ms. Duncan said, “our mission is to make family planning services available to those who couldn’t afford them otherwise. We provide vasectomies to men who have consulted with their partners, whose families are complete, and whose incomes must support those families. We prefer that single men who have fathered no children see private physicians…”

  A woman in a white smock appeared in the doorway. “Melissa,” she called. “We’re ready.”

  Across the room, a girl of sixteen or seventeen stood up. As she stepped around the children, she trembled.

  “… but, in any case, you should read the pamphlet,” Ms. Duncan was saying. She opened the drawer again and brought out a sheet of paper. “Then I hope you’ll contact one of the physicians on this list.” She put the list on the desk and looked at Blackburn as if she expected him to take it and leave.

  He watched the girl named Melissa disappear down a hall.

  “Why is she going back there?” he asked.

  Ms. Duncan stared. “That’s none of your business.”

  Blackburn stared back. “Does she have a family? Must her income support it? Did she consult with her partner?”

  Ms. Duncan’s face flushed. “Please leave.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t think you’re here fo
r information. I think you’re one of those who stand outside and shout horrible things at the people who come to us for help. You’re here to harass us.”

  Blackburn shook his head. “No. I’m here because I don’t want kids. I have no partner to consult, but since I work as a short-order cook, I also have no savings account or health insurance.”

  Ms. Duncan studied him. “All right,” she said, picking up a pen and poising it over a calendar. “You’ll have to meet with our staff counselor.”

  “I don’t need—”

  “It’s required. The discussion will deal with your reasons for this decision and with the nature of the procedure. Your cost will be calculated then.” She looked at the calendar. “Could you come back tomorrow at five forty-five?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “I’m glad I was able to help you,” Ms. Duncan said.

  Blackburn was glad too. When Ms. Duncan had begun asking her irritating questions, he had decided to kill her if she turned him away. He had never killed a woman before, and he had not been happy at the prospect.

  * * *

  The sun had gone down, and the air was cold. As Blackburn left the building, he put his hands into the side pockets of his jeans jacket and gazed at the concrete walk. He didn’t see the people who blocked his way until he was almost upon them. They hadn’t been there when he’d arrived.

  There were eight of them, clustered beside the drive that led to the clinic parking lot. Each held a burning candle in one hand and a handmade sign in the other. The letters shone in the glare of the streetlights.

  Blackburn stopped and read the signs. GOD COUNTS THE CHILDREN, said one. SAVE THE UNBORN, said another. ABORTION IS MURDER, said a third.

  A man stepped out of the cluster and asked, “Have you come from in there?” He pointed with his candle, and the flame faltered. “There where they butcher babies?”

  “I’ve just been inside,” Blackburn said, “but I don’t know anything about any butchering.”

  A slender woman joined the man. She was dressed in a gray coat with matching gloves, muffler, and cap. Her eyes and lips gleamed with reflections of her candle flame. Wisps of brown hair quivered beneath the edge of her cap.