I took an angry step forward, and he pressed the knife against her skin, drawing blood. She screamed in pain.
“Don’t try anything,” he said. “Or I’ll slit her fucking throat.”
I stood in the doorway, paralyzed, not knowing what to do. In some hopeful, overly imaginative part of my brain, I thought that maybe Philipe had faded into that other world by now and that he would pop out of nowhere and save us and drag this guy back where he had come from.
But that didn’t happen.
The murderer leaned forward. His erect penis pressed against Jane’s closed lips. “Open your fucking mouth,” he ordered. “Or I’m going to cut that baby out of your stomach.”
She opened her mouth.
And he pushed his penis in.
Instinct took over. If I had thought about it, I would not have done what I did. I would have been afraid for the life of both Jane and our unborn child, and I would have done nothing. But I did not think. I saw his erection slide into Jane’s mouth, and I reacted instantly, crazily. I lunged forward, leaped, and landed against his back, my hands on his head. He probably would have shoved the knife into Jane’s throat, but at that second she bit down, hard, and he screamed in agony, temporarily losing control. I yanked back on his head, pulling him off Jane, and grabbed for the knife. It sliced through my palm, and I can’t say that I didn’t feel the pain, but I did not stop, and I twisted his neck as far as I could to the right until I heard it crack. His screams were silenced and he went limp, but he was still holding on to the knife, and Jane pulled it out of his hand and shoved it through his crotch. A wash of blood poured over her distended stomach, cascading onto the sheets.
She pulled it out and shoved it through his chest.
I rolled over, still twisting his neck, and both of us fell off the bed onto the floor.
I jumped to my feet, waiting for him to get up again, but this time he was dead.
Really dead.
I looked around, saw no orange grass, no purple trees, nothing from that other place.
Jane was still holding the knife, and she was shaking like a leaf, sobbing uncontrollably, looking down in horror at the blood that covered her body. She kept spitting, and a line of saliva dribbled from her lower lip.
I could feel the knife cut on my palm now, and my own blood was pouring around the side of my hand and dripping onto the floor, but I ignored the pain and walked over to her, gently removing the knife from her hand and lifting her to her feet, taking her into another bedroom.
“Are they sending people after us?” Jane cried. “Are they after us because I wouldn’t let them take you?”
“No,” I said, stroking her hair and helping her down onto the bed. “That’s it. It’s over. It was just that one guy. And he was after me. Not you.”
“Maybe they’ll send more of them.”
“No,” I said. “That’s it.”
I didn’t know how I knew that that was true, but I did. One of Philipe’s “hunches,” maybe.
“It’s all over,” I said.
And for once I was right.
It was.
EIGHTEEN
I buried the body that afternoon.
I chopped it into pieces first.
The next day, we packed up what we owned and moved up to Mendocino.
NINETEEN
Four months later, Jane gave birth to a nine-pound boy.
We named him Philipe.
TWENTY
I think, sometimes, that I have been lucky. That I am fortunate to be Ignored. I may be average in my makeup, but I have not been average in my experiences. I have seen things normal men have never seen. I have done things normal men have never done. I have lived a good life.
It is a wonderful world in which we live. I have come to realize that. A world that is truly filled with miracles. And though my nature may preclude me from fully appreciating those miracles, at least I know that they exist.
And I try to teach that to my son.
I cannot be forgiven for the evil I have done in my life. For I have been evil. I believe that now. I know that now. Murder is an inherently evil act, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how convincing the rationalizations. Murder is evil no matter who does it or for what reason.
If there is a God, only He or She will be able to forgive me for what I have done.
The one thing I can say for myself is that I have learned from my mistakes. All that I have experienced and gone through has not been for nothing. The person I am now is not the person I once was.
So maybe there was a point to all of my journeys and side trips, to the meandering series of disconnected events that has been my life.
I still wonder what we are. Descendants of aliens? Genetic mutations? Government experiments? I wonder, but I am not obsessed by the question the way I once was. It is not the focus of my existence.
My son is.
Philipe is.
I don’t know if I believe in God or the devil or heaven or hell, but I can’t help thinking that there is a reason why we are the way we are. I do believe that we were put on this earth for a purpose. I don’t think that purpose is merely to exist. I don’t think that purpose is to be noticed like everyone else. I don’t think that purpose is test-marketing products for the mass consumption of middle America.
But I don’t know what the purpose might be.
Maybe I will find out someday.
Maybe my son will find out.
And what about that world that I glimpsed, that I almost entered? I think about it often. What was it? Heaven? Hell? Nirvana? Was it the place mystics and gurus see when they meditate for so long that they supposedly lose all sense of individual self? Or was it another dimension, existing concurrently with our own? I have read and reread “The Great God Pan,” and somehow I can’t buy that interpretation.
But I can’t offer an alternate theory.
Whatever it is, whether its origin is mystical or scientific, the existence of that glimpsed world somehow set to rest any anxieties I might have had about death and the afterlife. I don’t know that I was ever really bothered or worried about what might happen after death, but I must have been concerned at some level because I feel lighter now, more at ease. I don’t know if there is something after death—no one can know for certain—but I’m pretty sure there is, and it does not frighten me.
We still live here in Mendocino, by the ocean. In the mornings I write, while Jane watches Philipe and works in her garden.
We spend the afternoons together.
It is a good life, and we are happy, but I sense even now that we may eventually want more. I think sometimes of what James told me in Thompson, about there being a country of the Ignored, a land across the sea, an island or a peninsula where people like us live free and peacefully in a sovereign nation of our own.
And I think that it would be nice to raise children there.
And I stare at the water and I think to myself that someday, perhaps, I will learn to sail.
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