Beckwith sat there, refusing to look at the terrible thing nailed to his front porch wall.
After a long time, he got up and went inside. The house was dark. Knox saw the living room light go on; through the front window he saw Beckwith staring at the living room wall, at a thing more terrible than the dead animal outside.
Nailed to the wall, the same way his dog had been nailed, Beckwith saw, all in a row, his wife's best dress, his daughter's playsuit, and his son's T-shirt and jeans. All nailed to the wall at eye-level. The implications of the message were clear. Knox had intended it to be clear; Beckwith understood.
His family was having dinner down the street at Knox's house. He was supposed to join them as soon as he had cleaned up after work. He knew who was responsible for this.
Knox was responsible for it.
The Party would simply have killed him. But Knox must have said, let me take care of it, Ted Beckwith is my best friend, I will deactivate him.
Knox has said, with nails : Stop what you are doing. Stop right now. This minute. Or I will do what the Party wants me to do. I am giving you this humane and merciful break because I am your best friend. Now wash up and come to my house for dinner.
Turn off the porch light.
Knox was in on the raid at the high school. He was a squad leader, with three patches and a service commendation. He took the leader of the rebellion, a sixteen year old girl, to the bell tower of the high school, and raped her three times, and then threw her off.
Knox was made a Party Lieutenant and gathered the proof of revisionism that removed Hale from the ward. Knox took the contract on him. He also delivered the eulogy at the grinder ceremony.
Knox headed up the assault team on the Western Quadrant. He wore leather protective garments, moved through a cloud of infiltration gas, used a scattergun exclusively, and joyed in moving meticulously from sector to sector, street to street, house to house, room to room, slaughtering anything that moved or crawled or whimpered or pleaded or twitched. His promotion to Captain and ward selectman followed soon after.
Knox spent his recreation hours in the ward temple's interrogation chambers, quizzing malcontents. He began to collect fingers. They retained their look much longer than ears or cocks.
Knox spent three years getting ahead, but he hardly noticed the passage of time, it flew so fast.
Charlie Knox. Is. A man who.
Had been trained.
“Not me, Charlie...please, Charlie, what are you doing, not me!”
“Stop backing away. I'll make it quick.”
Across the bedroom. She picked up a pink mule with a pompon pouf on the toe. He followed. With the knife. She raised the bedroom slipper over her head, heel turned toward Knox threateningly.
“There's a mistake, Charlie!”
“No mistake.”
“It wasn't my name on the list, honey, please!”
“They don't make mistakes.”
A shoe is no damned defense.
“Charlie, not me, I love you, honey. “
He. Stops.
He. Sees movement out of the. Corner. Of his eye.
He looks for the first time.
“Not me, Charlie!”
His conditioning. Breaks.
Persons in black garments. There.
They have always been there. Now he sees. Them.
They stood watching Knox as he backed his wife into the corner at knife point.
“Oh, my God…Brenda! Do you see them?”
“Please, Charlie…”
“No, it's okay, I won't hurt you…do you see them?”
“See who, Charlie?”
Silence from them. Knox stared at them, fully, openly. And he realized they had been there often, watching him, on the raid, in the manufactory, in the furniture store, as he drove nails, in the bell tower, as he got ahead in the Party. They had always been there.
“I'm starting to remember, a lot of it is coming back.”
“Charlie, what're you talking about…don't hurt me, honey.”
“Brenda, listen: right there, standing right there, don't you see them?”
“I don't see anything, Charlie; are you all right? You wanna lay down a while, Charlie? The kids won't be home for a couple hours.”
“I don't know where they came from, another world I guess, but that doesn't matter. They're training us, to go out there for them, out there somewhere. But we weren't cruel enough. They took up where we left ourselves off.”
She lowered the slipper. He was rambling on now, saying things. The persons in black garments stood watching him, and there was almost a sadness on their faces, as though they had spent a great deal of time building something intricate and lovely and efficient, and now it had broken down. Their expressions did not speak of repair.
“They gave us the work on the line, and the words, and the missions, and the President's health. When did they come? How long ago? What do they want from-”
And he stopped.
He. Knew.
Charlie Knox is. A man who:
Had been a man.
Had been trained.
To go out there where he would not have been able to survive without their training.
Charlie Knox is a man who understood what he had been.
What he had become.
What he would have to be.
To be. Out there.
“Oh, God…”
Pain. And silence. Knox looked at his wife with eyes that might have belonged to the final moments of a golden retriever.
“I won't do it.”
“Won't do what, Charlie? Please, Charlie, talk sense, lie down a little.”
“You know I love you, honest to God I do.”
He turned the knife and gripped it with both hands and drove it deep into his own stomach.
For Knox, the porch light had been turned off.
She sits on the edge of the bed and cannot take her eyes from the memory of the man she lived with for nine years. The memory remains, the form on the floor is someone vaguely familiar but undeniably a stranger.
Finally, she rises, and begins to dust the room. She cleans thoroughly, mechanically, despite the dim black shapes she sees from the corner of her eye, shapes she takes to be dust. And so she cleans. Thoroughly. Mechanica1Iy.
Brenda Knox. Is. A woman who.
“The only thing we have to fear on this planet is man.”
Los Angeles, Shell Beach, Big Sur, Oakland. California/1973
COLD FRIEND
Because I had died of cancer of the lymph glands, I was the only one saved when the world disappeared. The name for it was “spontaneous remission,” and as I understand it, it is not uncommon in the world of medicine. There is no explanation for it that any two physicians will agree upon, but it happens every so often. Your first question will be: why are you writing this if everyone else in the world is gone? And my answer is: should I disappear, and should things ever change, there should be some small record available to whomever or whatever comes along.