The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors (19 page)

Murder, it turned out, was a lot easier in the movies.

I woke up on the Wednesday morning without an idea in my head. When I went through to the kitchen and turned on the light, a bulb popped, tripping the fuse in the main box. And a light went on inside my head.

Back when I bought my house in Devon, I didn't have much money. I'd only been able to afford the house because it was practically derelict and I learned enough of all the building trades to do the restoration and renovation myself. I can lay bricks, plaster walls, install plumbing, and do basic carpentry.

I also know how electricity works.

Cerys may be able to last overnight without eating and drinking. She won't be able to make it without going to the toilet. My cabin on the loch has been fitted out in retro style, with an old-fashioned high-level toilet cistern with a long chain that you have to yank hard to generate a flush. It turned out to be a simple task to replace the ceramic handle with a metal one and to wire the whole lot into the main supply. As her fist closes round the handle, two hundred and forty volts will course through her body, her hand will clench tighter, and her heart will freeze.

Part of my heart will also freeze. But I can live with that. And because nothing is ever wasted, I will find a way to make a script out of it. Such a pity Cerys won't be around to see that movie too.

The Story of the Stabbing

JOYCE CAROL OATES

F
OUR YEARS OLD
she'd begun to hear in fragments and patches like handfuls of torn clouds the story of the stabbing in Manhattan that was initially her mother's story.

That morning in March 1980 when Mrs. Karr drove to New York City alone. Took the New Jersey Turnpike to the Holland Tunnel exit, entered lower Manhattan and crossed Hudson and Greenwich Streets and at West Street turned north, her usual route when she visited an aunt who lived in a fortresslike building resembling a granite pueblo dwelling on West Twenty-seventh Street, but just below Fourteenth Street traffic began abruptly to slow—the right lane was blocked by construction—a din of air hammers assailed her ears—vehicles were moving in spasmodic jerks—Madeleine braked her 1974 Volvo narrowly avoiding rear-ending a van braking to a stop directly in front of her—a tin-colored vehicle with a corroded rear bumper and a New York license plate whose raised numerals and letters were just barely discernible through layers of dried mud like a palimpsest. Overhead were clouds like wadded tissues, a sepia glaze to the late-winter urban air and a stink of diesel exhaust and Madeleine Karr whose claim it was that she loved Manhattan felt now a distinct unease in stalled traffic amid a cacophony of horns, the masculine aggressiveness of horns, for several blocks she'd been aware of the tin-colored van jolting ahead of her on West Street, passing on the right, switching lanes, braking at the construction blockade but at once lurching forward as if the driver had carelessly—or deliberately—lifted his foot from the brake pedal and in so doing caused his right front fender to brush against a pedestrian in a windbreaker crossing West Street—crossing at the intersection though at a red light, since traffic was stalled—unwisely then in a fit of temper the pedestrian in the windbreaker struck the fender with the flat of his hand—he was a burly man of above average height—Madeleine heard him shouting but not the words, distinctly—might've been
Fuck you!
or even
Fuck you asshole!
—immediately then the van driver leapt out of the van and rushed at the pedestrian—Madeleine blinked in astonishment at this display of masculine contention—Madeleine was expecting to see the men fight together clumsily—aghast then to see the van driver wielding what appeared to be a knife with a considerable blade, maybe six—eight—inches long—so quickly this was happening, Madeleine's brain could not have identified
Knife!
—trapped behind the steering wheel of the Volvo like a child trapped in a nightmare Madeleine witnessed an event, an action, to which her dazzled brain could not readily have identified as
Stabbing! Murder!
—in a rage the man with the knife lashed at the now stunned pedestrian in the windbreaker, who hadn't time to turn away—striking the man on his uplifted arms, striking and tearing the sleeves of the windbreaker, swiping against the man's face, then in a wicked and seemingly practiced pendulum motion slashing the man's throat just below his jaw, right to left, left to right causing blood to spring instantaneously into the air—
A six-foot arc of blood at least
as Madeleine would describe it afterward, horrified—for never had Madeleine Karr witnessed anything so horrible—never would Madeleine Karr forget this savage attack in the unsparing clarity of a morning in late March—the spectacle of a living man
attacked, struck down, stabbed, throat slashed
before her eyes. The victim wore what appeared to be work clothes—work boots—he was at least a decade older than his assailant—late thirties, early forties—bareheaded, with steely-gray hair in a crew cut—only seconds before the attack the victim had been seething with indignation—he'd been empowered by rage—the sort of individual with whom, alone in the city in such circumstances on West Street just below Fourteenth Street, Madeleine Karr would never have dared to lock eyes. Yet now the burly man in the windbreaker was rendered harmless—stricken—sinking to his knees as his assailant leapt back from him—very quick, lithe on his feet—though not quick enough to avoid being splattered by his victim's blood. Making no attempt to hide the bloody knife he held—he seemed to be visibly brandishing the knife—the van driver ran back to his vehicle, deftly climbed inside and slammed shut the door and in virtually the same instant propelled the van forward head-on and lurching—with a squeal of tires against pavement—aiming the van into a narrow space between another vehicle and the torn-up roadway where construction workers in safety helmets were staring—knocking aside a sawhorse, a series of orange traffic cones scattering in the street and bouncing off other vehicles as in a luridly colorful and comic simulation of bowling pins scattered by an immense bowling ball; by this time the stricken man was kneeling on the pavement desperately pressing both hands—these were bare hands, big-knuckled, Madeleine could see from a distance of no more than twelve feet—against his ravaged throat in a gesture of childlike poignancy and futility as blood continued to spurt from him
Like water from a hose—horrible!

As if paralyzed Madeleine stared at the stricken man now writhing on the pavement in a bright neon-red pool—still clutching desperately at his throat—amid a frantic din of horns—traffic backed up for blocks on northbound West Street as in a nightmare of mangled and thwarted movement like snarled film. Nothing so mattered to Madeleine as escaping from this nightmare—in a panic of thudding heart, clammy skin and dry mouth thinking not of the stricken man a short distance from the front bumper of the Volvo but of herself—yearning only to turn her car around—reverse her course on accursed West Street back to the Holland Tunnel—the Jersey Turnpike—and so to Princeton from which scarcely ninety minutes before Madeleine had left with such exhilaration, childish anticipation and defiance
Manhattan is so alive!—Princeton is so embalmed. Nothing ever feels real to me there, this life in disguise as a wife and a mother of no more durability than a figure in papier-mâché. I don't need any of you!

So strangely Madeleine had seemed to be watching the spectacle a few yards away through a kind of tunnel—through the wrong end of a telescope—curiously drained of light and color; now she could see other people—fellow pedestrians approaching the fallen man—workmen from the construction site—on the run a police officer—and a second police officer.

Soon then there came a deafening siren—several sirens—emergency vehicles could come no closer than a side street peripheral to Madeleine's vision—Madeleine saw figures bent over the fallen man—a stretcher was lifted, carried away—nothing to see finally but a pool of something brightly red like old-fashioned Technicolor glistening on the pavement in cold March sunshine.
And the nightmare didn't end. The police questioned all the witnesses they could find. They came for me, they took me to the police precinct. For forty minutes they kept me. I had to beg them to let me use the women's room—I couldn't stop crying—I am not a hysterical person but I couldn't stop crying—of course I wanted to help the police but I couldn't seem to remember what anything had looked like—what the men had looked like—even the “skin color” of the man with the knife—even of the man who'd been stabbed. I told them that I thought the van driver had been dark-skinned—maybe—he was “young”—in his twenties possibly—or maybe older—but not much older—he was wearing a satin kind of jacket like a sports jacket like high school boys wear—I think that's what I saw—I couldn't remember the color of the jacket—maybe it was dark—dark purple?—a kind of shiny material—a cheap shiny material—maybe there was some sort of design on the back of the jacket—Oh I couldn't even remember the color of the van—it was as if my eyes had gone blind—the colors of things had drained from them—I'd seen everything through a tunnel—I thought that the van driver with the knife was dark-skinned but not “black” exactly—but not white—I mean not “Caucasian”—because his hair was—wasn't—his hair didn't seem to be—“Negroid hair”—if that is a way of describing it. And how tall he was, how heavy, the police were asking, I had no idea, I wasn't myself, I was very upset, trying to speak calmly and not hysterically, I have never been hysterical in my life. Because I wanted to help the police find the man with the knife. But I could not describe the van, either. I could not identify the van by its make or by the year. Of course I could not remember anything of the license plate—I wasn't sure that I'd even seen a license plate—or if I did, it was covered with dirt. The police kept asking me what the men had said to each other, what the pedestrian had said, they kept asking me to describe how he'd hit the fender of the van, and the van driver—the man with the knife—what had he said?—but I couldn't hear—my car windows were up, tight—I couldn't hear. They asked me how long the “altercation” had lasted before the pedestrian was stabbed and I said that the stabbing began right away—then I said maybe it had begun right away—I couldn't be sure—I couldn't be sure of anything—I was hesitant to give a statement—sign my name to a statement—it was as if part of my brain had been extinguished—trying to think of it now, I can't—not clearly—I was trying to explain—apologize—I told them that I was sorry I couldn't help them better, I hoped that other witnesses could help them better and finally they released me—they were disgusted with me, I think—I didn't blame them—I was feeling weak and sick but all I wanted to do was get back to Princeton, didn't even telephone anyone just returned to the Holland Tunnel thinking I would never use that tunnel again, never drive on West Street not ever again.

In that late winter of 1980 when Rhonda was four years old the story of the stabbing began to be told in the Karr household on Broadmead Road, Princeton, New Jersey. Many times the story was told and retold but never in the presence of the Karrs' daughter, who was too young and too sensitive for such a terrifying and ugly story and what was worse, a story that seemed to be missing an ending.
Did the stabbed man die?—he must have died. Was the killer caught?—he must have been caught.
Rhonda could not ask because Rhonda was supposed not to know what had happened, or almost happened, to Mommy on that day in Manhattan when she'd driven in alone as Daddy did not like Mommy to do. Nothing is more evident to a child of even ordinary curiosity and canniness than a family secret, a “taboo” subject—and Rhonda was not an ordinary child. There she stood barefoot in her nightie in the hall outside her parents' bedroom where the door was shut against her daring to listen to her parents' lowered, urgent voices inside; silently she came up behind her distraught-sounding mother as Madeleine sat on the edge of a chair in the kitchen speaking on the phone as so frequently Madeleine spoke on the phone with her wide circle of friends.
The most horrible thing! A nightmare! It happened so quickly and there was nothing anyone could do and afterward …
Glancing around to see Rhonda in the doorway, startled and murmuring
Sorry! No more right now, my daughter is listening
.

Futile to inquire what Mommy was talking about, Rhonda knew. What had happened that was so upsetting and so ugly that when Rhonda pouted wanting to know she was told
Mommy wasn't hurt, Mommy is all right—that's all that matters.

And
Not fit for the ears of a sweet little girl like you. No no!

Very soon after Mrs. Karr began to tell the story of the stabbing on a Manhattan street, Mr. Karr began to tell the story too. Except in Mr. Karr's excitable voice the story of the stabbing was considerably altered for Rhonda's father was not faltering or hesitant like Rhonda's mother but a professor of American Studies at the University, a man for whom speech was a sort of instrument, or weapon, to be boldly and not meekly brandished; and so when Mr. Karr appropriated his wife's story it was in a zestful storytelling voice like a TV voice—in fact, Professor Gerald Karr was frequently seen on TV—PBS, Channel 13 in New York City—discussing political issues—bewhiskered, with glinting wire-rimmed glasses and a ruddy flushed face.
Crude racial justice! Counterlynching!

Not the horror of the incident was emphasized, in Mr. Karr's telling, but the irony. For the victim, in Mr. Karr's version of the stabbing, was a
Caucasian male
and the delivery-van assailant was a
black male
—or, variously, a
person of color.
Rhonda seemed to know that
Caucasian
meant
white
, though she had no idea why; she had not heard her mother identify
Caucasian, person of color
in her accounts of the stabbing, for Mrs. Karr dwelt almost exclusively on her own feelings—her fear, her shock, her dismay and disgust—how eager she'd been to return home to Princeton—she'd said very little about either of the men as if she hadn't seen them really but only just the stabbing
It happened so fast—it was just so awful—that poor man bleeding like that!—and no one could help him. And the man with the knife just—drove away …
But Mr. Karr who was Rhonda's Daddy and an important professor at the University knew exactly what the story meant for the young black man with the knife—the young
person of color—
was clearly one of
an exploited and disenfranchised class of urban ghetto dwellers rising up against his oppressors crudely striking as he could, class vengeance, an instinctive “lynching,” the white victim is collateral damage in the undeclared and unacknowledged but ongoing class war.
The fact that the delivery-van driver had stabbed—killed?—a pedestrian was unfortunate of course, Mr. Karr conceded—a tragedy of course—but who could blame the assailant who'd been provoked, challenged—hadn't the pedestrian struck his vehicle and threatened him—shouted obscenities at him—a good defense attorney could argue a case for self-defense—the van driver was protecting himself from imminent harm, as anyone in his situation might do. For there is such a phenomenon as
racial instinct, self-protectiveness. Kill that you will not be killed.